Proverbs 16:32

16:32 Better to be slow to anger ¹  than to be a mighty warrior,

and one who controls his temper ²  is better than ³  one who captures a city. ⁴ 

Proverbs 20:3

20:3 It is an honor for a person ⁵  to cease ⁶  from strife,

but every fool quarrels. ⁷ 

Proverbs 25:21

25:21 If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat,

and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,

Genesis 50:15-21

50:15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph bears a grudge and wants to repay ⁸  us in full ⁹  for all the harm ¹⁰  we did to him?” 50:16 So they sent word ¹¹  to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave these instructions before he died: 50:17 ‘Tell Joseph this: Please forgive the sin of your brothers and the wrong they did when they treated you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sin of the servants of the God of your father.” When this message was reported to him, Joseph wept. ¹²  50:18 Then his brothers also came and threw themselves down before him; they said, “Here we are; we are your slaves.” 50:19 But Joseph answered them, “Don’t be afraid. Am ¹³  I in the place of God? 50:20 As for you, you meant to harm me, ¹⁴  but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day. ¹⁵  50:21 So now, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your little children.” Then he consoled them and spoke kindly ¹⁶  to them.

Matthew 5:44-45

5:44 But I say to you, love your enemy and ¹⁷  pray for those who persecute you, 5:45 so that you may be like ¹⁸  your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Matthew 18:21-22

18:21 Then Peter came to him and said, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother ¹⁹  who sins against me? As many as seven times?” 18:22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times! ²⁰ 

Romans 12:18-21

12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people. ²¹  12:19 Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, ²²  for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” ²³  says the Lord. 12:20 Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. ²⁴  12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Ephesians 4:32--5:1

4:32 Instead, ²⁵  be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you. ²⁶ 

Live in Love

5:1 Therefore, be ²⁷  imitators of God as dearly loved children

[16:32]  ¹ tn One who is “slow to anger” is a patient person (cf. NAB, NIV, NLT). This is explained further in the parallel line by the description of “one who rules his spirit” (וּמֹשֵׁל בְּרוּחוֹ, umoshel bÿrukho), meaning “controls his temper.” This means the person has the emotions under control and will not “fly off the handle” quickly.

[16:32]  ² tn Heb “who rules his spirit” (so NASB).

[16:32]  ³ tn The phrase “is better than” does not appear in this line in the Hebrew text, but is implied by the parallelism.

[16:32]  ⁴ sn The saying would have had greater impact when military prowess was held in high regard. It is harder, and therefore better, to control one’s passions than to do some great exploit on the battlefield.

[20:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “man.”

[20:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “cessation” (שֶׁבֶת, shevet); NAB “to shun strife”; NRSV “refrain from strife.”

[20:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “breaks out.” The Hitpael of the verb גָּלַע (gala’, “to expose; to lay bare”) means “to break out; to disclose oneself,” and so the idea of flaring up in a quarrel is clear. But there are also cognate connections to the idea of “showing the teeth; snarling” and so quarreling viciously.

[50:15]  ⁸ tn The imperfect tense could be a simple future; it could also have a desiderative nuance.

[50:15]  ⁹ tn The infinitive absolute makes the statement emphatic, “repay in full.”

[50:15]  ¹⁰ tn Or “evil.”

[50:16]  ¹¹ tn The verb means “command,” but they would hardly be commanding him. It probably means they sent their father’s instructions to Joseph.

[50:17]  ¹² tn Heb “and Joseph wept when they spoke to him.”

[50:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “For am I.”

[50:20]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “you devised against me evil.”

[50:20]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “God devised it for good in order to do, like this day, to preserve alive a great nation.”

[50:21]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “spoke to their heart.”

[5:44]  ¹⁷ tc Most mss ([D] L [W] Θ Ë¹³ 33 Ï lat) read “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you,” before “those who persecute you.” But this is surely a motivated reading, importing the longer form of this aphorism from Luke 6:27-28. The shorter text is found in א B ˹ pc sa, as well as several fathers and versional witnesses.

[5:45]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here, however, the focus is not on attaining a relationship (becoming a child of God) but rather on being the kind of person who shares the characteristics of God himself (a frequent meaning of the Semitic idiom “son of”). See L&N 58.26.

[18:21]  ¹⁹ tn Here the term “brother” means “fellow believer” or “fellow Christian” (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 2.a), whether male or female. Concerning the familial connotations, see also the note on the first occurrence of this term in v. 15.

[18:22]  ²⁰ tn Or “seventy times seven,” i.e., an unlimited number of times. See L&N 60.74 and 60.77 for the two possible translations of the phrase.

[12:18]  ²¹ tn Here ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo") is used as a generic and refers to both men and women.

[12:19]  ²² tn Grk “the wrath,” referring to God’s wrath as the remainder of the verse shows.

[12:19]  ²³ sn A quotation from Deut 32:35.

[12:20]  ²⁴ sn A quotation from Prov 25:21-22.

[4:32]  ²⁵ tc ‡ Although most witnesses have either δέ (de; Ì⁴⁹ א A D² Ψ 33 1739^mg Ï lat) or οὖν (oun; D* F G 1175) here, a few important mss lack a conjunction (Ì⁴⁶ B 0278 6 1739* 1881). If either conjunction were originally in the text, it is difficult to explain how the asyndetic construction could have arisen (although the dropping of δέ could have occurred via homoioteleuton). Further, although Hellenistic Greek rarely joined sentences without a conjunction, such does occur in the corpus Paulinum on occasion, especially to underscore a somber point. “Instead” has been supplied in the translation because of stylistic requirements, not textual basis. NA²⁷ places δέ in brackets, indicating some doubt as to its authenticity.

[4:32]  ²⁶ tn Or “forgiving.”

[5:1]  ²⁷ tn Or “become.”